The Walking Dead is a show about a group of survivors fending off hordes of zombies, but at its heart, it’s also about relationships. Take Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride), who over the course of the series have developed a unique bond tested by villains like Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Alpha (Samantha Morton). In the newest episode of the show, “Home Sweet Home,” Daryl questions Carol on whether freeing Negan from his cell so he could kill Alpha was the right decision. Her choice was risky — he could have easily turned against them — but at the time, it was the lesser of two evils, and Negan ended up staying true to his word and cementing himself as a valuable member of the group.
So when Daryl asks Carol about what she did, she simply shrugs. We don’t see much more of a reaction, nor do we learn more about her feelings. Thankfully, in conversation with Entertainment Weekly, McBride explains what the shrug means from her point of view:
"I think just uncertainty. What we’ve experienced from him is friendship with Judith, helping in the community. It’s a very different perspective than Maggie’s going to have. Yet at the same time, there may be some doubt, and I think the shrug is, well, I don’t know, but he did come through. I think the shrug was ‘maybe, but maybe not.’ I don’t know. He has come through."
Maggie (Lauren Cohan) does indeed have a different perspective. When she returns to the community, she’s shocked to see Negan out of his cell and demands an explanation. Negan was the man that brutally killed her husband Glenn, after all.
It was ultimately Carol’s decision to give Negan a chance, so it falls on her shoulders to explain everything to Maggie. “Yeah, I think Carol felt obligated to be the one,” McBride says. “She did it and she wanted Maggie to know, and certainly realizing that emotional impact and implications that that would have, and I just had to tell her.”
Maggie’s return will test whether Negan is sincere about being a part of the group
Hopefully they can work through that, because Maggie is an important part of the group. Daryl certainly feels it, as Reedus explained: “There’s a familiarity there with her that brings Beth, that brings her soul, that brings Glenn, and having her back — they’ve been through all of this, and this Whisperer War and it’s just been brutal, and it brings the sense of family back into it.”
It’s that sense of family and togetherness that makes The Walking Dead feel special. Some of these characters have been together for around a decade, giving their relationships a richness that only comes with time. Hopefully, that means they trust each another enough to get through difficult situations. And if Maggie can’t get over what Negan did to her family, it’s clear who’s side they will be on. “If there’s a moment where they have to decide whether it’s Negan or Maggie, it’s Maggie, for sure,” Reedus said.
This is despite Daryl saving Negan from being killed by Beta in the season 10 episode “A Certain Doom,” and Negan saving Daryl during a Whisperer ambush. “Yeah, we saw him do some friendly things, but is he faking?” Reedus wondered. “Is he trying to win us over?…e don’t have a friendship bracelet with Negan right now.”
The Walking Dead will dig into these complex relationships in a series of new episodes airing every Sunday on AMC!
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